FlavMD: Diagnosing 10 Quirky Kids’ Characters

Have you ever wondered if The Count’s extreme affinity for counting stems from a numeral-based neurological condition? Or if Belle from Beauty and the Beast really just had Stockholm Syndrome? Sometimes, kids’ film and TV characters are just plain diagnosable. Not in a bad way — just in a way that, if these characters existed in real life, their quirkiest qualities might be explained by a few fascinating syndromes and conditions that most of us never knew existed. We decided to channel our inner Lucy van Pelt, check out a few quirky characters’ symptoms, and lightheartedly diagnose them with some of the world’s most peculiar conditions. Read on for some foreign accents, sun-sneezes, and blue people; the doctor is in.

Belle, Beauty and the Beast

Diagnosis: Stockholm Syndrome

Excuse us as we toy with one of the globe’s finest fairy tales, but think about it — what if this interspecies love connection was a product of Stockholm Syndrome rather than true love? Good ol’ Wikipedia defines the syndrome as “a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.” That’s a Beauty and the Beast plot synopsis right there. Seriously, watch Disney’s “Something There” musical number again. Cogsworth knows what’s up.